Free Republic

It’s one thing to publish an editorial denouncing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump; any news outlet can do that, and plenty have. It’s another to get almost two dozen leading conservative thinkers to write essays arguing against the Manhattan billionaire’s nomination and agree to print them under a single banner: “Against Trump.”

In their editorial, National Review editors put it this way: There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones. Paraphrasing a line of scripture from 1 Timothy, Erickson writes this: We should not put a new conservative in charge of conservatism or the country, so that he does not become puffed up...

Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones. Trump's political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la...

National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, will publish a special issue on Friday opposing Donald Trump's bid for the presidency, according to a source with knowledge of the issue's contents. The issue will feature a blistering editorial that labels Trump a threat to conservatism, as well as essays by 22 prominent conservative thinkers from various ideological factions, in opposition to Trump's candidacy, the source said. "Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot on behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as The Donald...

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of...

Thursday, January 21, 2016 Trolling is the New Politics Posted by Daniel Greenfield Your classic troll was an amoral sociopath or played one on the internet. His only cause was his own amusement. He advocated horrible and contradictory causes because it amused him to infuriate people. If he could get an entire group howling for his blood, he won. If an outraged media reported on his antics, he was a prince among trolls. Chaos and absurdity were his only agendas. But eventually the trolls who did it for the "Lulz" gave way to the "Moralfags" sincere trolls who were sincerely...

Marco Rubio once "arrested for drinking beer in public park" By Robert Tait, Los Angeles 3:23AM GMT 22 Jan 2016 Marco Rubio, the Republican presidential contender who has been touted as a possible choice of the party's "establishment", was once arrested in a Miami park notorious for gang violence, drug-dealing and prostitution, a newspaper profile has revealed. He was detained along with two friends while going through a wayward late teenage phase for drinking alcohol in his home city's Alice C Wainwright Park after it had been closed to the public for the night. Mr Rubio, a United States senator...

I was water-skiing with my children in a light drizzle off Hyannis, Mass., last month when a sudden, fierce storm plunged us into a melee of towering waves, raking rain, painful hail and midday darkness broken by blinding flashes of lightning. As I hurried to get my children out of the water and back to the dock, I shouted over the roaring wind, "This is some kind of tornado." The fog consolidated and a waterspout hundreds of feet high rose from the white ocean and darted across its surface, landing for a moment on a moored outboard to spin it...

George Soros, the world's richest hedge fund billionaire, has no shortage of opinions when it comes to both politics and the global economy. Famed for making a billion dollars by "breaking" the Bank of England in 1992, Soros is in a semi-retirement, but his prognostications still move markets. And he remains a top contributor on the U.S. political scene, where he supports liberal candidates and causes. On Thursday evening at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Soros used a 45-minute interview with Bloomberg TV's Francine Lacqua to create an explosion of headlines on both the political and economic front. "Donald...

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr on Thursday strongly denied a news report that said he had told people he would vote for Democrat Bernie Sanders over Republican Ted Cruz. Burr’s aides asked The Associated Press for a retraction. An AP spokesman said the news agency was sticking by its story. “I will support whoever the GOP nominee is,” Burr tweeted. “@AP is trying to create discord where there isn't discord by telling lies.”

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Donald Trump raped his wife! Mogul hates breast-pumping lawyer! Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Pardon me if I roll my eyes. Or just laugh out loud at the cynicism of the whole thing. The other day the Daily Beast ran a story — this story right here — that purported to tell a presumably gullible public that Donald Trump had raped his wife. Really. The headline was as follows: Ex-Wife: Donald Trump Made Me Feel ‘Violated’ During Sex: Ivana Trump once accused the real-estate tycoon of ‘rape,’ although she later clarified: not in...

Well it looks like this who had hoped to capitalize on the old rape allegations from Trump’s divorce with his first wife Ivana Trump have just hit a huge roadblock by Ivana herself:

Ivana Trump said Tuesday that she and Donald Trump "are the best of friends" and that Donald "would make an incredible President." DAVE KOTINSKY/GETTY IMAGES Ivana Trump said Tuesday that she and Donald Trump "are the best of friends" and that Donald "would make an incredible President." Just a day after allegations re-emerged that Donald Trump raped his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, the bombastic billionaire’s former spouse played down the controversy — and endorsed his presidential run — saying that the two are still “the best of friends.” "I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years...

Just a day after allegations reemerged that Donald Trump raped his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, the bombastic billionaire’s former spouse played down the controversy, saying that the two are still “the best of friends.” *snip* “Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign,” she said. “Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible president,” Ivana Trump, who divorced her husband in 1992, added.

The Trump Circus has just become "R" rated as the Daily Beast has published a 25 year old allegation of rape by Trump's ex wife Ivana. The article quotes a graphic description of the "rape" from the 1993 book  Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. American Thinker being a family website, we will not reproduce any of the account here. Besides, we're not in the business of spreading falsehoods, except to violently criticize them. That said, Michael Cohen, Trump's Special Counsel at The Trump Organization, had some interesting comments for the Daily Beast reporters who wrote the hit...

The Daily Beast took a predictable swipe at Donald Trump yesterday by generating some “breaking news” which is actually a decades old and long abandoned story from Trump’s high profile divorce from his former wife, Ivana. The “story” in question, which Ivana Trump herself refuted shortly after it initially broke, related to comments she made during their divorce where she said she “felt violated” during a particular sexual encounter. Business Insider offers a brief history of where this tired old chestnut originated. When the allegations first surfaced in 1993 Ivana Trump issued a statement clarifying that she didn’t mean the...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may have raped his ex-wife Ivana Trump, according to a 1993 biography of the real estate mogul uncovered by The Daily Beast. Trump's attorney on Monday denied the allegation, claiming “you cannot rape your spouse.” “You’re talking about the front-runner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as private individual, who never raped anybody," Michael Cohen, the Trump Organization’s special counsel, told The Daily Beast. "And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.” The biography, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, by Harry Hurt III, details...

Ivana Trump once accused the real estate tycoon of ‘rape,’ although she later clarified: not in the ‘criminal sense.’ Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign to the world with a slur against Mexican immigrants, accusing them of being “rapists” and bringing crime into the country. “I mean somebody’s doing it!…Who’s doing the raping?” Donald Trump said, when asked to defend his characterization. It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for Trump—in more ways than one. Not only does the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination have a history of controversial remarks about sexual assault, but as it turns out,...

Donald Trump has attacked Ted Cruz roughly a billion times over the last week for having taken out loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs. Like most everything Trump says, his attacks are short on facts and even shorter on making sense. He claims somehow that Cruz attempted to hide the loans, even though he openly disclosed them on public filings (just not the right ones). Here he is, in fact, saying that Cruz is “worse than Hillary, if you think about it,” because of the loans: https://youtu.be/_NtpbWK5Kdg More specifically, Trump has repeatedly reiterated the claim (at the beginning of the...

I would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Many of the Republicans who have declared that they would never vote for Trump gave carte blanche to politicians who have been complicit in the growth of the government leviathan. These Republicans have ignored conservatism in the name of party politics, and their broken promises gave rise to Donald Trump's candidacy. Nonetheless, I will not be voting for Donald Trump in the primary. I take my conservatism seriously, and I also take Saint Paul seriously. In setting out the qualifications for overseers, or bishops, Saint Paul admonished Timothy, "If anyone aspires...